1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an object detecting apparatus and an image pickup apparatus for detecting an object (e.g., the face of a person) from an image, an object detecting method, and a program for causing a computer to execute the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
An object recognition technology for recognizing what an object contained in an image captured by an image pickup apparatus, such as a digital still camera or a digital video camera, is has been developed. For example, as the object recognition technology, a face detection technology for detecting the face of a person facing front from a captured image through image processing using the features, such as luminance and a color has been proposed. However, the face of a person may not be a front face. The face of the person may be turned to either side (e.g., the left side or the right side). Accordingly, for example, when only a front face is to be detected, it is difficult to detect a face turned in another direction and, therefore, the face of a person may not be properly detected.
Accordingly, a particular object detecting apparatus has been developed. The particular object detecting apparatus includes a plurality of determination units each provided for a direction of the face using a tree hierarchical structure. The particular object detecting apparatus sequentially determines the direction of the face in accordance with the branch indicated by the tree structure and detects a face (refer to, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-109229 and, in particular, FIG. 2).